A Maharashtra Home Department project to interview serial killers and repeat offenders in state prisons, scrapped in March after a complaint against its 23-year-old research head, is being revived with a new focus: inmates’ mental health and rehabilitation. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who also holds the Home portfolio, recently approved it.The original project, RUDRA (Research Unit for Detection and Resolution of Anomalies in Criminals), was scrapped after a member of its 10-member team complained against research head Atharva Deshpande.The revived project will instead focus on helping inmates move on from their past, identifying those at risk of self-harm and training prison staff to spot them. It is likely to be carried out by the Gandhinagar-based Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU), which has worked on a similar project with Gujarat prisons, and overseen by Dr S L Vaya, Chief Mentor and Emeritus Resource Faculty of RRU’s School of Behavioural Sciences and Forensic Investigations (SBSFI).Also read | The Mindhunter in Maharashtra: MBBS students work with government to profile serial offenders“The earlier project’s vision was more in line with interviewing hardened criminals as envisioned by project head Deshpande, the then head who is no longer associated with the project. We, however, felt that there should be some initiatives to ensure those behind bars do not deteriorate further in terms of mental health or prevent the attraction to continue down the path of crime,” an official said.Officials said they looked at institutes such as the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru, which pointed them to RRU.“In Maharashtra there are several instances where inmates die by suicide sometimes out of guilt of their crimes or sometimes because their families abandon them. There was an instance in Thane prison where a man hung himself as his wife would not come to meet him. So, one of the techniques that would be used will be to ensure that family members of the deceased come to meet them regularly and using their influence to ensure that the person has a positive outlook and tries to use their times behind bars fruitfully and learn from their mistakes,” an official said.Also read | Maharashtra scraps serial killer study in prisons after complaints against project head“One has often seen that a person who may have committed a petty crime or a crime of passion goes behind bars and turns into a hardened criminal with networks by the time the inmate leaves because of the influences in the prison and proximity to hardened criminals. This is one of the aspects that we also want addressed,” the official added.Story continues below this adRRU is an Institution of National Importance under the Union Home Ministry. Dr Geetesh Kumar Singh, project director of Global Correctional Administration Studies there, said the university has worked on the rehabilitation, reintegration and reformation of inmates and has set up nine Psychological Social Care Centres across the country: four in Gujarat and one each in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh. “One centre will come up in Maharashtra as well,” he said. As the MoU with Maharashtra is still in the works, specific details will be revealed at the appropriate time, he added.The Maharashtra MoU is likely to follow the one Gujarat’s prisons department signed with RRU on February 16 this year, aimed at “correctional excellence”. It covers training programmes for correctional staff, joint research on technology and rehabilitation to inform policy, and workshops on emerging challenges in correctional practice.Approved on May 7, 2025, at a cost of Rs 1.80 crore and planned to run for 10 years, RUDRA aimed to profile repeat offenders by studying traits that could indicate the likelihood of reoffending.Deshpande, who proposed the idea, was to lead 10 MBBS students from Mumbai’s Nair Hospital, with access to inmates held for serious offences across state prisons. He was inspired by FBI special agent John Douglas’s book Mindhunter, which explores the psychological profiling of criminals. He approached the Home Department in 2024 and later pitched it to Fadnavis. After a pilot in two prisons, the full project was approved in May last year.Story continues below this adThe Home Department’s GR scrapping it in March said, “…considering the serious complaints received against the Research Head of this project, Atharva Deshpande, and the report submitted by the Dean, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Corporation Medical College and General Hospital, Sion, Mumbai, in connection with the said complaints, there is a possibility of adverse impact on the functioning of this important project of the government.”It cancelled the MoU and the financial sanction for the project with immediate effect.